Opinion: Peter Beattie admits the truth of our renewables folly

There is one thing that you can say for Peter Beattie: He knows when something is stuffed up, writes Matt Canavan. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Former Labor premier Peter Beattie interviewed by The Courier-Mail recently. Picture: David Clark

In The Courier-Mail this week Peter Beattie admitted that we had “stuffed it up” by investing too much in renewables. There is one thing that you can say for Peter Beattie: He knows when something is stuffed up.

And it is not just Peter belatedly confessing our energy follies. Just a few weeks ago, another former Labour leader, Tony Blair, said that net zero policies were “doomed to fail” and “riven with irrationality”.

I stood for the leader of the Nationals party this week not so much to change the leader but to change our illogical policy of supporting a target of net zero emissions by 2050.

The Australian people have never had a vote on the fantastical net zero goal. At the last two elections, both the Liberal-Nationals Coalition and the Labor Party have supported net zero giving the Australian people no choice.

The Liberal-National Coalition has been thrashed at both those elections. Maybe we should try something different.

I think it is time the Australian people are given a choice on whether we should attempt to completely change how we create electricity, transport goods, make food and sustain industry in just one generation.

I have been against net zero from the get go because it is unachievable, futile and will cost us a fortune.

Just in the first three years of the target, Australia has lost its urea industry (the most used fertiliser to grow food), our plastics industry and our nickel industry. Our steel and aluminium industries are limping along sustained only by massive taxpayer handouts as the promise of cheap green energy disappears quicker than the promised hydrogen jobs.

All of these industries suffer under onerous carbon taxes from Labor’s net-zero goal.

Thanks to net zero, Australia can no longer feed itself for the first time since the early settlers. We now have to import fertiliser from China and the Middle East. Without fertiliser we can not grow the food we need in the often arid Australian climate. This week another fertiliser plant, the Dyno Nobel plant near Mount Isa, announced that it may need to shut because of high gas prices.

All of the higher costs are flowing through to the average price of goods too. During the election I found some old Woolies catalogues and went and shopped like it was 2022. What would have cost me $132 then, was $215 today, more than 60 per cent higher.

A pack of Tim Tams cost $6 now, whereas in Canada they cost just $A4.50. The new Canadian Prime Minister just scrapped carbon taxes.

So many other countries have either never taken its net zero commitments seriously or are now backing away. China continues to build an average of two coal-fired power stations per week. So during the five-week election campaign, China would likely have opened 10 new coal-fired power stations. In Europe, the British Conservative Party has dumped their commitment to net zero and the European Parliament is reconsidering its renewables energy plans following the massive Spanish blackouts.

While most countries remain signed up to net zero in name only, Anthony Albanese has adopted Trump’s climate policy approach. Trump is at least doing what he says and has pulled out of the Paris agreement. Likewise, our Prime Minister is doing what he says but he is just continuing the unilateral deindustrialisation of Australia in a futile attempt to change the temperature of the globe from The Lodge in Canberra.

Labor’s “we will do it alone” climate policy sells out Australian jobs like sponge cake.

We never conducted a full cost-benefit analysis of adopting net zero but New Zealand did. Their study found that net zero would reduce the size of the New Zealand economy by 10 to 20 per cent and employment would fall by 2 to 4 per cent. In Australian terms, that would reduce our annual income by $200bn to $400bn and 200,000 to 400,000 Australians would lose their jobs.

In his victory lap after the election the Prime Minister says he wants to lead a government by “progressive patriotism”. It is just too bad that his government has not been able to deliver progressive paychecks.

Real wages have gone back a decade under Anthony Albanese. People are hurting, but in the Prime Minister’s obvious giddiness about keeping his job, he seems to not understand that a record number of Australians are working two jobs.

We can not expect things to get better if we just do more of the same. The first step to restore Australia’s living standards is for the Prime Minister to listen to Peter Beattie, realise that we have stuffed it up and change course.

Matt Canavan is an LNP senator for Queensland

Originally published as Opinion: Peter Beattie admits the truth of our renewables folly